Chicken wings are already great plain and simple, but what makes them even better is the very fact that you can toss them in whatever sauce you want. But the typical sauces can get boring after a while. For something new, why not try these Korean spicy chicken wings. You won’t be disappointed. Stay tuned to learn the recipe.

Korean Spicy Sauce Ingredients

For this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

1 tablespoon canola oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice wine

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoon ginger, finely grated

3 tablespoon garlic, minced

4 tablespoon Gochujang (Korean spicy chili paste)

1 tablespoon red pepper flakes

8 chicken wings

What is Gochujang

Before we get started, let’s talk briefly about this “Gochujang”. Some of you who are not familiar with Korean food may not know what this is. This is a spicy chili paste unique to Korean cooking. It’s a fermented condiment made from a combination of soybeans, chili peppers, and glutinous rice. There’s really no substituting this vital ingredient because it’s the heart of this dish. If you aren’t in luck and don’t live near any Asian grocery stores that would normally carry this item then I highly recommend turning to the internet. The rest of the ingredients shouldn’t be too hard to find. The only other items that may take some looking to find are the rice wine and rice vinegar. You should check your local grocery stores for them first, but you can always buy them along with the Gochujang if you must order from online.

Choose How to Cook Your Wings

The first thing you’d want to do is determine how you want to cook your chicken wings. Whether you decide to go the more traditional route of deep frying your wings, or you choose our preferred method of smoking them, you’ll want to figure this out so you can decide how to proceed with the next step. If you’re going to be deep frying your wings, you will want to prepare this spicy sauce ahead of time and then start deep frying your wings. Trying to do both at the same time will be a lot of work and leave a lot of room for mistakes.

If you want to stay true to our recipe then you will want to smoke your wings instead. I’ve already covered how to smoke your wings in details, so I won’t talk about that here. If you’re smoking your wings, you can prepare the sauce while the wings are in the smoker.

Making the Spicy Korean Sauce

Having determined your cooking method for your chicken wings, we are ready to get to making the Korean spicy chicken wings sauce. To start off, heat up the oil in a sauce pan (or wok if you have one). Give the oil a few seconds to heat up, but don’t let it smoke. Stir in your grated ginger and minced garlic and turn down the heat to medium-low. Keep stirring until the ginger and garlic turns golden with a hint of brown in color.

Stir in the GoChujang paste. Stir constantly until the pepper flake becomes fragrant. Be careful not to burn it.

Add the soy sauce, rice wine, rice vinegar and honey into the pan. Stir it well. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for about 6 minutes for the sauce to cook down a little bit and thicken slightly. Then stir in the red pepper flakes.

You can now turn off the heat to the sauce. Keep the sauce covered to keep it warm until your wings are ready. When your wings are ready, quick toss the wings in the sauce. If you’re using a large enough sauce pan, you can just quick toss the wings. I find using a wok makes this process way easier.
Once you’re all done, it’s time to sit down and enjoy these wonderful Korean spicy chicken wings.